← Table of contents
Secret Service Under Pitt

Note 593 — Chapter XVI · ARTHUR O'LEARY IN LONDON

Reading edition

'For King Louis is loved by the Irish Brigade,' we know on the authority of Irish song, and the judge was baptised 'Louis' apparently in compliment to the French king, described as 'the assertor of American liberty.' The bias of the Perrins was always democratic, and the judge himself had been the attached friend of Robert Emmet, whom he embraced in the dock. The conduct of 'P. the Scholar' (T.C.D.) at this time is noticed by Archbishop Magee, then a fellow, in a letter printed in Plunket's Life. The judge's brother, Mark Perrin, rector of Athenry, in a letter to me, states that on the night Emmet was sentenced to death, Louis Perrin came home to their house at Chapelizod, bathed in tears. In that picturesque part of the 'Strawberry Beds,' where one can cross the Liffey by a ferry, access is gained to the old churchyard of Palmerstown, in which, partly smothered in weeds and fallen leaves, may be traced the epitaph of Judge Perrin's father. When Brougham declared in 1828 'The Schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust to him armed with his Primer against the Soldier in full military array,' he used the idea in a higher sense than could apply to M. Perrin and his 'Grammar,' who, unobtrusive as he seems to have been, caused some disquietude to Lord Clare, a man of all others the most difficult to perturb.

Explore with AITake your curiosity a little further.

Reading settings